There were 295 people, including 154 Dutch nationals, on board the Malaysia
Airlines flight that crashed in rebel-held east Ukraine on Thursday, an
official from the carrier said.

11:53PM BST 17 Jul 2014

in Malaysia, the country's Prime Minister says the Malaysia Airlines jetliner did not make any distress call before it went down in Ukraine, and that the flight route was declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

A senior vice president for Malaysia Airlines said on Thursday that at least 154 Dutch citizens were on board the passenger airliner that crashed in eastern Ukraine.

Huib Gorter told media at a news conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, that there were also at least "27 Australian passengers, 23 Malaysian, 11 Indonesian, six from the UK, four from Germany, four from Belgium, three from the Philippines and one Canadian" on board.

He said the nationality of the rest of the victims was still to be identified.

"Now the nationality of the crew are all Malaysian - 15 crew. The four flight deck crew, two first officers, two captains and 11 cabin crew," he said.

Fauziah Mohd Taib, Malaysian Ambassador to the Netherlands, also expressed her condolences for the loss of so many on board.

The plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said. It was carrying 295 people on board.

Both the Ukrainian government and the pro-Russia separatists fighting in the region denied any responsibility for downing the aircraft.

The Boeing 777-200ER, travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, appeared to have broken up before impact and the burning wreckage - which included body parts and the belongings of passengers - was scattered over a wide area.